


The Frogs and the Demons

by KinkyTrashCan



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Implied monster-fucker Kyrie, M/M, Momgil/Dadte, Mpreg, Nero/Kyrie mentioned, Sibling Incest, Weird demon biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27687590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KinkyTrashCan/pseuds/KinkyTrashCan
Summary: Vergil finally tells Nero the truth about his mother, and it turns his whole world upside down.  He could’ve done without the extra lesson on demon biology too.
Relationships: Dante & Nero & Vergil (Devil May Cry), Dante/Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 173





	The Frogs and the Demons

“So,” Nero said with a casualness he didn’t feel, “are we ever gonna talk about who my mother is?”

Vergil went stiff, not looking at him, and Nero held in a sigh. This was what happened anytime he asked something Vergil decided he wasn’t going to answer. It was starting to piss him off.

“Do _ you _ know?” Nero turned to Dante and scowled when he saw how his uncle was picking at some spot on the surface of his desk and also not looking at him. “That’s a ‘yes, but I won’t tell you either,’ I take it.”

He got to his feet from the couch and headed for the door. Apparently outstaying his welcome happened fast now that they were both back from hell.

“Com’on, kid, don’t be like that,” Dante protested. The scrape of his chair announced he’d stood up, but he froze when Nero whipped around to glare at him.

“Are you fucking serious?!” Nero snapped. “You’ve been harping on me to trust him, to trust  _ you _ , but you always pull this shit. Like abandoning me wasn’t bad enough. Just admit you don’t give a crap that this is important to me, and you only--”

“That’s not true,” Vergil said. The man was looking at him with wide eyes and something almost like fear swimming inside them. Nero hesitated.

Dante approached slowly, like he was walking up to a skittish animal. “It’s just a little… complicated,” he said.

Nero rolled his eyes. “Complicated, huh? Complicated like you don’t know, or complicated like you won’t tell me?”

Vergil practically squirmed. Which was a weird look on someone that usually had about as much emotional depth as a dinner plate. “Neither of those.”

“Okay, then. What? What is it?” His father and uncle exchanged a nervous look, and Nero wanted to scream. “If you know who she is, just fucking tell me--!”

“I am,” Vergil blurted.

Nero made a frustrated wave of his hand to prompt the man. “Well? Go on!”

“No, I mean... I am,” Vergil said, “your mother.”

The room was silent other than the faint honk of an irritated cabby’s horn two streets down. Nero stared at him like he’d lost his mind. Because that made zero sense. “Did you just say  _ you’re _ my mom?”

Vergil didn’t break eye contact. “Yes.”

Mouth opening, Nero couldn’t make a damn thing come out of it. His brain tried to turn the idea around in case it might suddenly become clear.

“And I’m your dad,” Dante said. He had the fucking gall to stick out his hands and waggle them in the air. “Surprise!”

Nero blinked slowly, half hoping that when he opened his eyes again, everything would reset so he could pretend this never happened. “Please tell me you’re joking,” Nero said.

“You see, cambions have a malleable Devil Trigger form,” Vergil rushed to explain. “They can adapt to different environments and create new internal structures as desired, which is why when Dante’s egg was fertilized inside me by my--”

“Noooooooo!” Nero slapped his hands over his ears. “No, no, no! I do not want to hear-- Wait. Did you say his  _ egg _ ? What the fuck! Was I hatched?!

“Oh no,” Vergil assured him. “Not like you’re probably thinking, at least. It’s far more similar to the gelatinous structure of a tadpole egg, but they’re gestated until birth inside the fertilizing parent’s body.”

Nero spun around in a circle, and he wondered what sort of hell dimension he’d dropped into. “Holy fuck. You two are serious, aren’t you?”

“My egg, his spunk. Like I told you, it’s complicated,” Dante said.

“But I gave birth to you,” Vergil insisted with the weirdest hint of pride. “So I am your mother.”

Nero felt like the ground was falling out from under his feet, and he wobbled over to the couch again before he could land on his face. Dante and Vergil watched him worriedly. “You’re fucking  _ brothers _ ,” he blurted out. “That’s incest!”

“For humans,” Dante said.

And Nero wanted to throw something at him. “You’re half human, dumbass!”

“And half demon,” Vergil pointed out.

“You’re telling me I’m the child of an incestuous relationship between  _ twin brothers _ , and you just tried to argue that it’s fine because you’re not  _ completely _ human?” Nero’s voice rose in pitch and volume without meaning to. “Not only am I an accident, but I’m some freaking--”

Dante was suddenly right in front of him, crouching down and grabbing onto his knee with anxious fingers. “Not an accident, kid. Not even close.”

“W-what?” That startled him out of his spiral, and Nero stared at him in shock.

The couch dipped under Vergil’s weight when he sat next to Nero and lay his hand on the other knee. “It was right after Dante and I met again. We had each thought the other was dead for so many years, and our emotions were... well, complicated. We both desperately wanted to have some tangible outcome from our coupling, and you were that result.” 

Nero looked at Dante, unable to speak.

His uncle -- father? -- sighed. “I wanted to knock Vergil up, and I guess he was feeling baby crazy, so it worked.”

Leave it to Dante to summarize things in the absolute worst way.

“God dammit.” Nero covered his face with his hands. “This is too fucking weird. I can’t…”

“We weren’t trying to hide this from you,” Vergil said softly. “We simply weren’t sure how to tell you in a way that wouldn’t make you feel like… this.”

Staring at his thighs through the gaps of his fingers, Nero breathed in and out a few times, trying to come to grips with what he’d just been told. Slowly, he lowered his hands and looked Dante dead in the eyes. “If you lie to me,” he said carefully, “I will knock your teeth in.”

Dante’s face would’ve been comical if the situation was any different. “Only the truth, kid.”

“Did you know who I was when we first met?”

His father -- uncle? Fuck, this was confusing -- was silent for a long moment, eyes darting around and jaw moving like he was trying to practice what he was going to say. “Not exactly. I hoped, though.”

“You hoped,” Nero said, trying to keep his voice low and calm.

“Yeah.” Dante sighed gustily and arranged himself more comfortably on the floor. “I thought you’d died with Vergil, to be honest. He showed up at Temen-ni-gru almost a year after we split up again, definitely not looking very pregnant or toting a baby, so I thought maybe we were the kind of demons who had those super long gestational cycles or something, but then he… Well.”

Vergil’s fingers flexed on Nero’s kneecap, but he stayed silent.

“Then he fell into hell,” Dante continued. “I thought I’d lost you both until I saw Vergil on Mallet Island, and... Shit, kid, the only other possibility I could think of was that  _ Mundus _ had taken you from Vergil before he brainwashed him.”

Nero leaned back into the couch and decided Dante really didn’t need to explain why that would be the worse option. “So, when we ran into each other in Fortuna…” Nero prompted.

Dante’s grin was crooked and tired. “I didn’t dare believe that it was you until I saw how you could use the Yamato. I seriously thought my heart was gonna bust right out of my chest. My  _ kid _ , alive and well and tough as nails.”

“Okay,” Nero said. He needed time to deal with that bombshell, but he turned his head to look at Vergil. “And how did I end up in Fortuna in the first place?”

The fingers on his knee drummed a little beat while Vergil collected himself. “I needed a safe place for my pregnancy,” he said after a moment. “Somewhere with enough demonic energy to ensure our progeny had all the resources they needed to develop. Fortuna is one of the few locations in the human realm that could offer me that without a serious threat of attack from demons.”

Vergil inhaled deeply and let it out. “But as your birth approached, the hormones that ensure demons protect their spawn long enough for them to mature seem to have crossed with the ones that help humans bond with their offspring, and I became convinced that the only way I was going to keep you safe was if I followed through with my original plan of obtaining father’s power. It doesn’t excuse what I did, but--”

“No, it definitely doesn’t,” Nero said flatly. Because he sure as hell didn’t want to feel responsible for the deaths of all those people before he’d even been a few months old. “You left me at the orphanage.”

His father -- mother. No, this was getting really weird -- dropped his eyes. “I had intended to come back for you, but when I lost to Dante… I can’t say that I was thinking very clearly when I chose to fall into the Underworld instead.”

“Great. Just great.” Nero tried to make himself laugh but it sounded strangled. He wiped at his eyes and was frustrated to find he was starting to cry. “I got to spend my childhood alone, having no idea who the hell my parents were, because you two jackasses could fuck like bunnies but not actually sit down and talk to each other.”

“I’m sorry,” Vergil said softly.

“I don’t want to hear that!” Nero cried. And he really didn’t. He’d just learned that his crazy fucking family was a crazy  _ fucking _ family, and he wasn’t in any state of mind to be accepting apologies for things that scarred his soul to this day. He tried to get up off the couch, needing to get away, but Dante practically climbed into his lap to keep him down.

His father -- uncle, nope, still bizarre -- wrapped his arms around him and held on like his life depended on it. Nero wasn’t sure what to do.

“Kid, please  _ stay _ .” Dante’s eyes were frighteningly sad, and Nero drew back in surprise. “I know this is bad, and we fucked everything up even worse by not telling you as soon as we knew, but, shit. I can’t handle losing you again because of another mistake.”

Vergil’s fingers hesitantly brushed a strand of hair off Nero’s forehead, and he was almost grateful to look away from Dante’s desperation. “What can we do to make this right?” Vergil asked. “How can we help you?”

Anger, dark and aching and definitely misdirected, boiled up inside him. “You’re asking me that?! Why the hell should  _ I _ be the one figuring out this shit?” He tried to throw Dante off but couldn’t shake his octopus grip.

“What do you need from us?” Dante pleaded.

“I don’t-- I don’t fucking know!” Nero’s eyes burned, and he felt his sinuses start to get stuffy from the tears that rolled down his cheeks. “How the hell would I know? I’ve never had a family before, and you’re… Fuck, I don’t…”

The arms around him pulled gently, and Dante lay a hand on the back of his head to draw him in closer. Nero found himself tucked under Dante’s chin, sheltered against his warm, strong body, and it made him sob all the harder.

Vergil’s hands settled on his back, rubbing soothing circles while he sucked in ragged breaths in a vain effort to get his crying jag under control. It wasn’t working, and their comforting gestures only seemed to be making him feel safe enough to just let go of it all.

He hated it.

It was everything he’d ever wanted as a child.

Nero had no experience with any of this, so adrift and lost. He cried until it felt like his eyes were going to turn inside out, and the quiet words his family offered were drowned out by the throbbing of his pulse in his head. Only one phrase got through.

"W-what?" He stammered.

Vergil paused, hands curled protectively around Nero's sides. "We love you," he repeated.

His breath stuttered, and Nero felt like someone had pulled the bones out of his body. He lay limply between them, trying to absorb those three words.

“We love you  _ so _ much,” Dante said quietly. “Oh, kid, you are the best thing either one of us has ever done with our lives.”

Everything was so quiet for a long moment, only the sound of Vergil’s hands still rubbing Nero’s clothed back keeping it from being eerie. Nero didn’t know what to do, what to think. He’d dreamed all his life about finding his parents and hearing those three words from them. What was he supposed to do now?

He was so… tired.

But...

“I… love you too,” Nero whispered. Because he did even when it hurt. Even before he knew the truth. These two were his family, and god, but he wanted whatever they would give him so badly.

Vergil’s cool lips pressed against his temple, and his father -- mother, fuck! He would figure this out eventually -- stroked his hair. It felt so good.

“We will always be here for you, Nero,” Vergil said softly. “We will never leave you again, I swear.”

"I'm sorry," Nero mumbled.

"For what?" Dante asked.

That was a good question, and one Nero didn't have an answer for. "I dunno… For overreacting, I guess."

Dante sent an amused look to Vergil. "Hey, our worst case scenario involved you trying to cut our heads off, so this seems pretty tame in comparison."

Nero’s laugh was congested, but it lifted some of the weight that had constricted his chest so badly. The three of them sat there for a while longer, and Nero basked in the warmth of being sandwiched between two people who cared so much about him. It was so peaceful. Which wasn’t something he could say very often about his life.

“So, what happens now?” Nero asked.

“Perhaps… would it be possible for you to… stay with us for a while?” Vergil suggested haltingly. “Just a week or two. So we can get to know each other again?”

He’d have to make a call to be courteous, but Kyrie had already encouraged Nero to spend some extra time with his family on this trip, so he didn’t doubt she’d insist he agree to the idea. It would be really weird to explain the truth to her later. Though if anyone would be understanding about weird demonic shit, it was his girlfriend who not only loved studying all that same weird demonic shit but also delighted in the fact she had a monster boyfriend in her bed.

“Yeah, I think I can do that,” Nero said.

“Awesome!” Dante exclaimed, and Nero could feel his father’s -- uncle’s. Did it even matter? -- joy under his cheek. “We’ll get some pizza, watch some dumb movies, cuddle on the couch. It’ll be great.”

That actually sounded nice. He’d done stuff like that with Kyrie and Credo once upon a time, but having the chance to do it with his parents would be… nice. Nero tried to fight down a yawn.

Vergil’s palm started rubbing on his back again, and Dante’s fingers combed through his hair some more. It was really hard to keep his eyes open.

“Hmm. It seems a nap might be in order first,” Vergil teased softly, but Nero couldn’t even be mad with how comfortable he was.

“Yeah, poor kid’s all tuckered out.” Dante kissed the crown of his head and then laid back to rest against the arm of the couch, drawing Nero along with him so they were nearly prone. “You just get some rest, Nero. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Yes,” Vergil agreed. “We’ll always be here for you.”

He wasn’t alone. Not anymore. The soothing sentiment settled on Nero as encompassing as a woolen blanket, following him in his descent into slumber. It was the most restful sleep he ever had in his life. And when he woke, it was to the warm presence of his parents, still there, just as they promised.


End file.
